Publications by authors named "Franco Molina"

The deproteinization of chitosan is a necessary purification process for materials with biomedical purposes; however, chitosan sourcing and purification methods can modify its molecular weight, deacetylation degree, and residual proteins. These factors affect the reactive groups that affect the immunomodulatory activities of cells, particularly macrophages and monocytes; considering this activity is key when developing successful and functional biomaterials. Here, two brands of chitosan were purified and used to synthesize nanoparticles to evaluate their immunomodulatory effect on monocyte and macrophage differentiation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Breast cancer is the most diagnosed type of cancer worldwide and the second cause of death in women. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most aggressive, and due to the lack of specific targets, it is considered the most challenging subtype to treat and the subtype with the worst prognosis. The present study aims to determine the antitumor effect of beta-D-glucose-reduced silver nanoparticles (AgNPs-G) in a murine model of TNBC, as well as to study its effect on the tumor microenvironment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Accidents, trauma, bone defects, and oncological processes significantly impact patients' health and quality of life. While calcium phosphates and bioactive glasses are commonly used as bone fillers to facilitate bone regeneration in orthopedics and traumatology, they exhibit certain disadvantages compared to calcium silicophosphate phases. This study evaluates the in vitro cytocompatibility and in vivo osteogenic properties of two-third-generation ceramic phases: silicocarnotite (SC) and nagelschmidtite (Nagel).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The increasing risk of amputation due to diabetic foot ulcer calls for new therapeutic options; for that, we determined the role of IMMUNEPOTENT CRP (ICRP) and its parts in the wound healing process of superficial wounds in diabetic BALB/c mice. A potency test was performed to confirm the batch of ICRP, and then its parts were separated into pellets, supernatants, and exosomes, and another group of exosomes loaded with insulin was added. Viability and scratch healing were assessed in NIH-3T3, HUVEC, and HACAT cell lines.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The vibrational and electronic spectroscopy of the radical cations of two nucleobases (NB) (uracil and thymine) was studied by cryogenic ion photodissociation spectroscopy. The radical cations have been generated from the photodissociation of NB-Ag complexes. A charge transfer process from the NB to Ag governs the deactivation mechanism, leading to the formation of the radical cation without further tautomerization.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: The emergence of multi-drug-resistant bacteria is one of the main concerns in the health sector worldwide. The conventional strategies for treatment and prophylaxis against microbial infections include the use of antibiotics. However, these drugs are failing due to the increasing antimicrobial resistance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Neoadjuvant therapy constitutes a valuable modality for diminishing tumor volume prior to surgical resection. Nonetheless, its application encounters limitations in the context of recurrent tumors, which manifest resistance to conventional treatments. Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have emerged as a promising alternative for cancer treatment owing to their cytotoxic effects.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Aflatoxins, particularly aflatoxin B (AFB), are harmful substances linked to poisoning and cancer in both animals and humans.
  • Clay adsorbents, like smectites and zeolites, are used to reduce AFB absorption in the gastrointestinal tract of animals.
  • A study evaluated four types of clays (three smectites and one zeolite), finding that smectites were most effective in adsorbing AFB, with C-1 (montmorillonite) showing a 98% efficiency, while also absorbing trace essential nutrients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Chronic wounds in diabetic patients can take months or years to heal, representing a great cost for the healthcare sector and impacts on patients' lifestyles. Therefore, new effective treatment alternatives are needed to accelerate the healing process. Exosomes are nanovesicles involved in the modulation of signaling pathways that can be produced by any cell and can exert functions similar to the cell of origin.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Immunogenic cell death (ICD) is a type of cell death capable of stimulating immunity against cancer through danger signals that lead to an adaptive immune response. Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have been shown to have a cytotoxic effect on cancer cells; however, their mechanism of action is not fully understood. The present study synthesized, characterized, and evaluated the cytotoxic effect of beta-D-glucose-reduced AgNPs (AgNPs-G) against breast cancer (BC) cells in vitro; and assess the immunogenicity of cell death in vitro and in vivo.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Emulsions have been widely used as immunological adjuvants. But the use of materials derived from plants such as cottonseed oil, alpha-tocopherol, or minerals such as zinc, as well as their use at the nanometric scale has been little explored. In this study, we develop a new miniemulsion and evaluated its antioxidant and phagocytic capacity, as well as parameters related to immune response stimulation by cytokine expression and antibodies production in a mice model.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background/aim: Prostate apoptosis response 4 (PAR4), a tumour-suppressor protein, selectively induces apoptosis of cancer cells without affecting normal cells. Its soluble form is induced by secretagogues (e.g.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Oxidation of the nucleobases is of great concern for the stability of DNA strands and is considered as a source of mutagenesis and cancer. However, precise spectroscopy data, in particular in their electronic excited states are scarce if not missing. We here report an original way to produce isomer-selected radical cations of DNA bases, exemplified in the case of cytosine, through the photodissociation of cold cytosine-silver (C-Ag) complex.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The photodynamics of protonated tryptophan and its mono hydrated complex TrpH -H O has been revisited. A combination of steady-state IR and UV cryogenic ion spectroscopies with picosecond pump-probe photodissociation experiments sheds new lights on the deactivation processes of TrpH and conformer-selected TrpH -H O complex, supported by quantum chemistry calculations at the DFT and coupled-cluster levels for the ground and excited states, respectively. TrpH excited at the band origin exhibits a transient of less than 100 ps, assigned to the lifetime of the excited state proton transfer (ESPT) structure.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Herein, we report the synthesis of Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) in chitosan (CTS) solution by chemically reducing HAuCl. CTS was further functionalized with glycidyl methacrylate (chitosan-g-glycidyl methacrylate/AuNP, CTS-g-GMA/AuNP) to improve the mechanical properties for cellular regeneration requirements of CTS-g-GMA/AuNP. Our nanocomposites promote excellent cellular viability and have a positive effect on cytokine regulation in the inflammatory and anti-inflammatory response of skin cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Breast cancer is the most frequent type of cancer worldwide and triple negative breast cancer is a particularly aggressive subtype. Novel therapies for the treatment of cancer patients focus on the remodeling of the tumor microenvironment (TME). Orthotopic and heterotopic syngeneic mice are the most common model used to study the TME in preclinical research.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT) is the most common malignity in dogs. Because there are reports that this tumor is resistant to vincristine sulfate, the chemotherapeutic options are scarce, and the development of new therapeutic approaches is necessary. In this study, we evaluated the cytotoxic activity of vincristine, doxorubicin, temozolomide, panobinostat, toceranib, gemcitabine, cisplatin, fluorouracil, cyclophosphamide, and methotrexate on a CTVT cell line, determining that all drugs decreased the viability in a dose-dependent manner.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The photodetachment and stability of R-Mandelate, the deprotonated form of the R-Mandelic acid, was investigated by observing the neutral species issued from either simple photodetachment or dissociative photodetachment in a cold anions set-up. R-Mandalate has the possibility to form an intramolecular ionic hydrogen-bond between adjacent hydroxyl and carboxylate groups. The potential energy surface along the proton transfer (PT) coordinate between both groups (O …H … OCO) features a single local minima, with the proton localized on the O group (OH… OCO).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background/aim: Wilms' tumor 1 (WT1) is involved in the development of the urogenital system and is expressed in podocytes throughout life. Inflammation of renal glomeruli causes renal damage-induced nephrotic syndrome and steroid-resistant nephrotic syndrome have mutations in the WT1 gene. The aim of this work was to determine if the inflammatory process modulates the expression and localization of WT1 in podocytes that cause kidney damage using lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-treated mice as a sepsis model.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Blood samples were obtained from 16 high-risk heifers; eight were newly arrived from a 40 h road trip (0 days post-arrival (DPA)), whereas the other eight heifers had been in the feedlot at 25 DPA. Both groups were transported from the southeast tropical region of Mexico to a feedlot in the northeast and were sampled on the same day. The complete blood count, blood chemistry, and cytokine gene expression were analyzed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A series of ten α , β -unsaturated benzotriazolyl-1,3,4-oxadiazole derivatives was synthesized and all compounds were evaluated in vitro against three breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7, MDA-MB-231 and 4T1) at different concentrations (0.1, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 mg/mL).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Rabies is a fatal viral infection that causes enc ephalitis in warm-blooded animals, including humans. Dog-transmitted rabies is considered eradicated in Mexico; however, rabies is not being tested in livestock with neurological symptoms (one of the main manifestations of rabies disease). In this case report, we describe a rabies case in a white-tailed deer in the Santo Domingo ranch, in Catazajá, Chiapas, Mexico, where white-tailed deer are kept under captivity, and are meant for human consumption.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In this paper, we present the IRMPD spectra of three ionic complexes between guanine (G) and silver (Ag): [GAg-HO], [GAgG] produced in the electrospray ionization source of the mass spectrometer, and [GAg] produced by collision induced dissociation of the [GAgG] complex. On the basis of the comparison of theoretically calculated IR spectra, we show that there are two isomers of each complex containing two different keto-amino (KA) tautomers of G (GKA(1,9) and GKA(1,7)). The observed isomers are the most stable structures in aqueous solution, and their experimentally estimated relative populations are in better agreement with the calculated relative populations in solution than in the gas phase, both at 298 K.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Glioblastoma multiforme is a malignant neoplasm of the brain with poor prognosis. The first-line drug against glioblastoma is the alkylating agent temozolamide (TMZ); unfortunately, treatment resistance and tumor re-incidence are common. In some cases, immunogenic cell death (ICD) inducers can decrease treatment resistance and tumor recurrence by stimulating an antitumor specific immune response.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Ligand-free atomic silver nanoclusters (AgNCs) were successfully synthesized following the electrochemical procedure developed by Lopez-Quintela and col. (D. Buceta, N.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF